Chapter 1 Summary

Charles Norstadt is fourteen when he came to know The Man Without a Face. No one knows how he lost his face. Many think that it may have been from a car accident. Charles and his mother run into him at the grocery store. She later says that he should consider plastic surgery. He does not speak to anyone and is called the Grouch behind his back. Charles' sister, Gloria, thinks that he is "gruesome." Charles is disappointed because Gloria, seventeen, will not be going away to school in the fall after all. Life will be more bearable without her. Charles has flunked the entrance exams for St. Matthews but is still determined to somehow get there in the fall.

Charles' mother is pretty. Gloria and Charles' younger sister look like her. Charles looks like his father with blond hair and green eyes...